Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet recording apparatus and an ink jet recording method.
Description of the Related Art
There have been known ink jet recording apparatuses in which a recording head, having multiple recording elements that discharge ink, is scanned over a recording medium while the recording elements are driven, thereby discharging ink upon the recording medium to record an image. It is known that such ink jet recording apparatuses may encounter trouble such as decrease in amount of discharge or discharge failure if the temperature of the ink being discharged is low. This phenomenon results in insufficient quality of the image being recorded. There is also known a technique where the recording head is heated if the temperature of the recording head is lower than a predetermined target temperature before starting or during recording, but not heated to where the heating would cause ink to be discharged. Thus, temperature-retention control can be performed to where the temperature of the recording head is within a predetermined range.
If the temperature of the recording head is lower than the target temperature when starting recording, heating needs to be performed until the temperature of the recording head reaches the target temperature, before starting recording. This results in heating waiting time, meaning that the throughput of recording suffers. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-188987 discloses a method to suppress reduced recording throughput by starting heating in a non-recording period before starting recording on a certain recording medium, and stopping the heating when recording on the recording medium ends.
However, according to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-188987, temperature-retention control is not performed after recording on one certain recording medium ends until recording starts on the next recording medium. While power consumption can be suppressed by temporarily stopping electric power, the temperature of the recording head will drop each time a recording medium is recorded on. Once such a temperature drop occurs, the temperature of the recording head cannot be raised to the target temperature in a short time before recording on the next recording medium, so there is the concern that waiting time for heating of the recording head may occur. Also, in a case of recording on both faces of a recording medium, the same problem of heating waiting time may occur between recording on the faces, even if the amount of time between ending recording on the front face of the recording medium and starting recording on the rear face of the recording medium is set to a short time. Such occurrence of heating waiting time may result in lower recording throughput when consecutively recording on multiple recording mediums in a short time, or when performing double-side recording.
On the other hand, even when consecutively recording on multiple recording mediums, if the interval from recording on a certain recording medium till recording on the next recording medium is long, sufficient time can be taken to perform temperature-retention control till the recording on the next recording medium starts. Accordingly, there may be cases where, even though the power is temporarily turned off, the power can be turned on again and the temperature of the recording head can be raised to the target temperature or higher in time to record the next recording medium.